Multi-chair scheduling

As I travel around visiting dental practices it never ceases to amaze me how many dentists choose to work out of only 1 surgery.In fact, based on my experience, I would say that around 90% of dentists work that way with only 10% using 2 or more chairs. That strikes me as an incredible waste.Please let me explain why.If you use a stopwatch you will find that typically it takes 10 minutes to clean and reset a surgery after a patient has departed. Some offices are quicker and some take longer but 10 minutes is a fair average.Even modest practices see 12 patients a day. That means that without a second surgery to go to the dentist is sitting, twiddling her thumbs watching the nurse clean up for 2 hours a day.That's 2 hours a day spent doing something that's not only boring but also produces not a cent of income.Personally, rather than waste my time like that I'd prefer to either see more patients and make more money or see the same number of patients and go home 2 hours earlier.By investing a mere $50,000 in extra equipment the dentist can free herself up to become much more productive.In fact my calculations indicate that a dentist could pay off the $50,000 in only 3-4 months with the increased productivity.Why wouldn't any rational dentist do that?